A 3.5 minute excerpt of the fully generative, never repeating music composition system for Universal Everything's V&A Forever installation in the John Madejski garden of the Victoria & Albert Museum London (Nov 2008 - Feb 2009).

The music was composed in realtime (in Java/OpenAL) using a custom developed generative system which strategically picked instruments from a library of approx. 250 single-note base samples, designed by Simon Pyke (@freefarm). These samples are then algorithmically arranged in real time into polyrhythms, chords, melodies of varying densities & intensities. All of these rhythms, chord progressions, the melodic phrases themselves, repetitions, transpositions, key & tempo changes are entirely generative & evolving, using a variety of techniques. E.g. cellular automata are playing a central role to generate multitimbral and polyrhythmic melodies/phrases, which then are randomly mutated to produce key changes and entirely new variations over time. The overall tempo of the composition was varied between ~65 - 130 bmp via layered (additive) sine waves, similar to the concept of a biorhythm, creating a larger soft arc/transition to a more up-beat character towards the end of the installation (after 2+ months).

I developed a custom GUI tool to allow Simon and me to define the macro configuration of the composition system, assign individual metadata for each of the 250 instruments/samples (e.g. pitch/octave ranges, min/max tempos, tags, usage probabilities at certain times, group associations, exclusions with other instruments). It took ~5 months of daily fine tuning and listening to hundreds of hours of generated outputs to create this composition system. Yet, once the installation was live, an entirely new & different (within the parameters) composition resulted and so put us on equal footing with any other visitor/listener.

Project documentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ988B5vlyo

Generative music composition system & algorithms: Karsten Schmidt.
Sound design: Simon Pyke.
Creative direction: Matt Pyke

V&A Forever Excerpt

Context: http://media.thi.ng/2014/talks/we-are-the-incanters/index.html

Recording of the Sonic-PI livecoding demo given at Retune 2014 conference (slightly extended with extra synth stacks after the conf, but still recorded as another live coding session - no cheating!).

Sourcecode here:
https://gist.github.com/postspectacular/d9c951efb166a2e82f53

Check out Sonic-PI yourself, it's amazing!
http://sonic-pi.net

Sonic - Pi - Retune14

20180207 - equilibrium

Free Download

Been working on something different / new direction as part of @forthcharlie & thi.ng/synstack research... Granular synthesis, time slicing, generative sequencing & layering, resonators, filters, erosion, AI voice samples

20180922 - machine learning

Recording of my first live jam w/ VCV Rack (https://vcvrack.com) and Ableton... forgive the lack of proper mixing

20181020 - modular diary 001

a brief Saturday break well spent: Modular Diary 002 @vcvrack (basses & bleeps) + @ableton + @kv331synthmaster

Modular Diary 002

20181027 - (semi) modular diary 002

quick weekend sketch to be developed further...

20181104 - sketch (excerpt)

Final version of the 2010 showreel soundtrack, a re-edit of loops from these 15 tracks (sorted alphabetically by artist):

Byetone - Capture This (Part II)
Charlotte Gainsbourg - Time of the Assassins (Matthew Dear Remix)
Guido Schneider &amp; Jens Bond - Eijeijei
Kink &amp; Neville Watson - Inside Out
LFO - Them
Lee Jones - Weisses Kaninchen
Matthias Meyer - Tenor (Boris Werner Remix)
Matthias Meyer - Voltage
Michael Jackson - Billie Jean (Jimmy Edgar remix)
Onur Özer - ???
Patlac - Cedar
Rjd2 - A Moment Of Weakness
Rui Vargas - ???
Thomas Fehlmann - Alles, immer
Wagonchrist - Extreme Possibilities



Toxiclibs showreel 2010 soundtrack

20190530 - Venus/Manomine

Channelling some positive energy to counter darkness descending onto UK after their plebiscite/suicide result...

Partially made with samples created via https://demo.thi.ng/umbrella/ramp-synth/

20191213 - blinding darkness

This goes out to my amazing family, friends, supporters, patreons, open source contributors... thank you, thank you!

Now, let's all try to make 2021 less of a sub-basement of hell kind of affair... ✌️

20201224 - twentytwenty

Here's to a more positive, peaceful, progressive and less pandemic 2021! Stay healthy, stay home, be good!

20201231 - twentytwentyone

(Re)searcher of human endeavours, DIY synth, electronic music connoisseur, producer since 1993

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